“In science, there is a motto, “publish or perish”, which is a reflection of how we define success – simply the number of papers you publish in high quality journals. If you don’t publish enough, then you will struggle to find research funds.After today, perhaps science has a new one, “innovate or perish”, a motto that could be shared with the nation as a whole.As announced in the Turnbull Government’s innovation statement, the metrics by which researchers will be judged (and ultimately universities funded) are to be broadened to include engagement impact, where research activities will also take into account those efforts to work with industry and ultimately commercialise discoveries.”(more)

“A sweeping report about the state of education across the globe shows that overall, countries are making big strides on several important education indicators, from prekindergarten through the higher education space and into the workplace. But compared to many industrialized countries, the U.S. is lagging in a number of areas, according to “Education at a Glance 2015,” the 600-page report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. For example, the U.S. still ranks high when it comes to the number of people earning degrees, but other countries are catching up, and tuition in other countries is nowhere near as pricey. On the K-12 front, educators in the U.S. teach for longer hours, but get paid less. And the U.S. ranks at the bottom when it comes to the number of children attending an early childhood education program.”(more)

“On June 19, the University of Washington and elite Tsinghua University in Beijing announced a new, richly funded cooperative program to be based in Seattle and focused on a topic that has become a sore point in China: innovation. Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina’s comment in late May that Chinese “are not terribly imaginative” has been criticized as a sweeping judgment, but it highlighted a common perception both in the United States and in China itself — that the world’s second-largest economy is short on home-grown innovation, and on the business and academic cultures necessary to nurture it.”(more)

“China has enough resources to become the innovation leader in the world but getting people to realize the importance of innovation and creativity is key to moving forward for China in the area of innovation. China needs to breakthrough with acquisitions of both technologies and talent. A good way to do this is to innovate through the next generation. The innovation or intellectual capacity of the Chinese people is boundless, but the political world in which their schools, universities and businesses abide is stifling and not allowing for this freedom to innovate.”(more)

“There are only a handful of these “wild playgrounds” in the country. They embrace the theory that free, unstructured play is vital for children and offer an antidote to the hurried lifestyles, digital distractions and overprotective parents that can leave children few opportunities to really cut loose. “It’s really central that kids are able to take their natural and intense play impulses and act on them,” says Stuart Brown, a psychologist and the founding director of the National Institute for Play. Children need an environment with “the opportunity to engage in open, free play where they’re allowed to self-organize,” he adds. “It’s really a central part of being human and developing into competent adulthood.” Brown says this kind of free-range fun is not just good; it’s essential. Wild play helps shape who we become, he says, and it should be embraced, not feared. Some educators advocate “dangerous play,” which they say helps kids become better problem solvers.”(more)

“Dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline doesn’t require more information or analysis. It requires a will to change strong enough to produce sustained, effective action. Someone said that the other night at a meeting about the pipeline. And a lot of people said what a lot of people have been saying for a very long time, the gist being don’t criminalize kids, educate them. Well, maybe it takes repetition to sink in deep enough to matter. Here’s a definition of the pipeline: “ … the policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” That’s from the American Civil Liberties Union, one of numerous organizations working nationally to fix what’s wrong. Schools went along with the tough-on-crime, no-tolerance attitude that swept politics and the criminal-justice system in the 1980s. The result has been a huge increase in the number of children suspended or expelled, often for classroom behavior that could be dealt with productively if it were treated as a teaching opportunity.”(more)